


through the night hours of the darkened earth

by dollylux



Series: Fic Advent Calendar 2015: Siblings, Husbands, Lovely Ladies, and Other Miscreants [22]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Churches & Cathedrals, M/M, New Orleans, Prayer, Religious Conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 17:25:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5506445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollylux/pseuds/dollylux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While on a hunt in New Orleans on Christmas Eve, Sam wants to attend a midnight mass.</p>
            </blockquote>





	through the night hours of the darkened earth

**Author's Note:**

> day twenty-two | prompt: midnight
> 
> sorry this one's a day late. i hope you enjoy it<3
> 
> Thank you to everyone who consistently leaves comments and reblogs to share my work. I am so unbelievably grateful for you. <3

Ghosts outnumber the living in New Orleans.

Not just ghosts either. Spirits and creatures of all kinds hide in her shadows, more than earning all the legends and stories built up in the city’s history that now surround it like a fortress wall, keeping out just as much as it keeps in.

Looking for a particular ghost here is a frustrating, slow process that Dean’s had to deal with more than once in his bizarre and strangely long life, and ghosts don’t stop haunting on holidays.

They don’t give a shit if it’s Christmas and that Dean had big plans to drag Sam over to Pensacola to see how many places they could get sand and how dark their skin could get in five days, four nights.

In fact, he’s pretty sure he can feel ghosts lurking around them while Dean gets his second, conciliatory chicory coffee from the Cafe du Monde, somehow managing to frown even as he’s drinking from his white mug, powdered sugar clinging to the edges of his mouth. They’re probably smirking.

“We can come back,” Dean tries to reason, not letting on how much joy he’s getting from his drink, how much he adores the dark, almost chocolatey flavor of the chicory against the bitterness of coffee. He licks his lips and meets Sam’s eyes. “We’ll come back, like. January 2nd.”

Sam sighs, short and annoyed, his lips pursing in the precise way that lets Dean know that he’s already lost this argument.

“That’s over a week away,” Sam argues, brushing the sugar from his fingers with a paper-thin napkin, and glancing around at the crowded outdoor cafe to make sure no one’s listening. “Who knows what could happen between now and then?”

Dean doesn’t groan but it’s a near thing. His cup clatters against the plate when he sets it down, and he leans back in his seat and narrows his eyes at his little brother.

“I wanted…” He licks his lips, his turn to look around for nosy neighbors. He drops his voice just in case. “I wanted to take you to the beach. Wanted to get you all warm and dark and not let you outta bed until--”

“Dean.” Sam’s blushing but there’s a smile on his face. He looks up at him with those woodland eyes of his and gives him a dimple for his trouble. “It’s okay. We can go after it’s all over. Wherever you want.”

Dean shifts in his seat, leaning forward to drop his voice to a whisper.

“What if I want you in that alley beside the church, right now?”

Sam is so pretty in pink right now, looking so soft and pleased, and when he reaches over for Dean’s hand he gives it without hesitation, stroking over Sammy’s callouses like he can love them away.

“We’ve got a room for the night on Ursuline. And it’s almost midnight.” Sam is speaking slowly, like he’s thinking about something else, like there’s a favor he wants to ask Dean and he’s afraid to do it. But to be fair, if it isn’t a sexual favor, Dean’s not gonna be very happy about it, no matter what.

“Out with it,” he says, rubbing a worry circle into Sam’s wide palm with his thumb. The drizzling rain has picked up, falling with steady force against the tired green cover of the cafe.

“It’s almost midnight,” Sam says again, lovely eyes lowered. “I want to go to mass at the cathedral.”

Dean groans, pulling his hand away so he can rub hard at his delicately aging face.

“Church? You want to go to church instead of letting me suck your dick?” He knows he’s practically whining, but he really can’t help it. “ _Church?_ ”

“Jesus Christ, Dean,” Sam mumbles, lifting up to reach for the wallet in his back pocket and dragging out a couple of bills for a tip. “A little louder next time. Don’t think they heard you across the river.”

“That’s probably because they’re drunk and having Christmas Eve sex over there, like normal people,” Dean points out, standing up and reaching over to snatch the last bite of beignet from Sam’s plate. People are definitely listening now, most of them smiling in amusement. It makes Dean feel a tiny bit better.

“Let’s go,” Sam grits out, shoving his wallet back and reaching over to grab Dean around the arm like a wayward child.

“Jesus died so we could have sex tonight,” Dean continues as they weave through the crowd. “It’s in the Bible.”

“I hate you,” Sam says.

Dean grins and tugs his arm from Sam’s grip so he can slip his hand into Sam’s furthest back pocket, giving his little ass a firm squeeze.

“Yeah, I know you do.”

The tree in Washington Artillery Square is lit up with the honey-glow of twinkly lights and topped with a red fleur-de-lis, and the sight of it makes Dean roll his eyes and fall even more in love with New Orleans at the exact same time. Even at 11pm on Christmas Eve, there is still an impressive amount of people out, most of them carrying umbrellas and holding last-minute bags of Christmas gifts. Sam and Dean mosey along like it’s a warm spring evening, both of them tucked into three layers and jackets, their heads covered with snug knit caps that keep most of the rain away. 

Dean keeps his hand stubbornly in Sam’s pocket as they drift through the crowd, more than a little pleased that he’s passing by entire families while he’s got his hand on his little brother’s ass.

The St. Louis Cathedral is a stately, spiked diva at the head of Jackson Square with the symmetry and severity of the Renaissance and an Old Worldliness that transports Dean right out of the United States and even out of this century.

Sam leads them right toward it, and Dean’s hackles rise at the thought of it, of the dickhead known as God and his host of self-righteous twats, and fury bubbles up in him so fast that he comes to a stop in front of the church steps, glaring up at the towering building as the rain coats his face.

“...Dean?” Sam tips his head to the side like the puppy he is, and Dean removes his hand from Sam’s pocket and shoves it along with the other one into his coat pockets, trying to school the irritation from his face. “What--”

“Why do you even wanna go in here? You know as well as I do that nobody’s listening.” He looks up and meets the eyes of a woman who frowns at him as she passes, and he holds her gaze, mouth tight to keep from sneering.

“It’s just…” Sam starts on a sigh, both of his hands held up in almost childish defeat as he shrugs. “I just want to. Okay? It’s just something I need to do.”

“Well, I ain’t goin’ in,” Dean tells him, feeling as young as Sam looks, petulance forcing him a couple of steps back. “You can do what you want.”

Sam just watches him with his careful eyes, his shoulders pulled in, looking about as self-conscious and embarrassed as Dean’s ever seen him outside of adolescence. He hates himself for putting that look on his face.

“What will you do?” Sam asks, his voice small.

Dean shrugs and looks around them, at the milling people and the rain-slicked, sagging streets of the French Quarter.

“I’ll figure something out. Just call me when you’re done.”

He doesn’t wait for Sam to reply, doesn’t give him time to. He walks away, tugging the cap down over his ears and digging his nails into his palms in his pockets. He can feel Sam’s eyes on him, can feel the loneliness radiating from Sam in instantaneous, painful waves.

Sometimes it’s excruciating to be so intricately connected with someone.

 

Thing is, Dean remembers his Mom’s angels.

He remembers their ceramic presence in his room, remembers her whispered prayers at his bedside, remembers praying to them the night of the fire, Sam’s tiny, trembling body in his too-young arms. He remembers begging for them to save his Mommy, to bring her out of their burning house and not take her away. 

Little boys need their Mommy. And before he’d even learned how to read, he learned that the angels don’t care.

There is nothing he’s experienced in his three and a half decades on this earth and off of it that has changed his opinion about Heaven and its inhabitants. If anything, he hates them even more now. More than just being unfeeling and silent, he knows now that they’re corrupt and petty and cunning, and none of them, not even ones who are his friend sometimes, if they’re feeling up to it, are to be trusted completely.

So the idea of praying to them, of talking to their equally dickish Father, is absurd.

He finds a cash only bar on Chartres dark enough to keep him in shadows while he warms his bones with several fingers of bottom-shelf whiskey. The bar’s other patrons are all as hunkered and quiet as he is, as alone as Dean has made himself. He keeps his phone out on the greasy counter and glances at it every few seconds, waiting for it to light up with a text from Sammy.

Sometimes at night, he can feel Sam’s waking silence next to him in bed, can hear him breathing soft and steady, can almost see the tiny, unhurried movements of Sam’s eyelashes while he prays in wordless fervency. It’s a thing that separates them, a tiny sliver of divide between their ghosts: Sam’s belief and Dean’s lack of it.

What angers Dean to the point of trembling, even in the witching hours with Sam warm and alive in his arms, is that God doesn’t deserve Sam’s devotion. None of them do.

He hits the streets again after he feels unsteady but calmer, a tremble setting up in his body from the cold rain now falling, threatening to become sleet. He hears the distant chime of the church bells at the place that has Sam, marking the half hour. It’s nearly Christmas, they’re both alive, and Dean is choosing to keep them apart.

“Goddamnit,” he says with feeling. He closes his eyes and lets the pull from Sam’s half of their soul wash over him, almost warming him. He turns his old boots on the timeworn street and starts off back where he came from.

The ornate streetlights are hazy with fog and trimmed with bright red ribbon, and Dean breathes in the damp air, smelling the faint scent of incense over the brine from the ancient river behind him. He hesitates at the foot of the churchsteps, chewing on his bottom lip like a little boy. If lightning didn’t hit Sam when he walked in, maybe Dean will be overlooked, too.

The candles flickering in the foyer of the church give off a surprising amount of warmth and light, all the tiny flames dancing merrily for the souls they represent. Dean only looks at them for the barest moment, feeling almost voyeuristic, like he is overhearing the prayers said over each one.

The nave is brimming with people and dressed for the occasion, trimmed with garland and ribbons, twin Christmas trees on either side of the sanctuary. The gold chandeliers swaying gently overhead are beautiful and gaudy and perfectly Catholic, and Dean can’t help but shake his head as he walks with his father’s long-legged stride up the aisle in search of his brother.

He can see his bowed, dark head tucked into the furthest corner a few rows up, can tell by the breadth of his shoulders and the earnestness of his lowered face that it’s his Sammy. He takes a deep breath and makes his way over to him, dipping around one of the massive pillars to get around a group of people and stopping at his side.

The delicate, pink-tipped point of Sam’s nose, his closed eyes, and the soft bow of his mouth makes him look like a cameo, and Dean nearly drops to his knees right there, facing not the priest and his sonorous voice at the front, not the crucified Christ bleeding near the ceiling above him or his weeping, virginal mother below but his brother, the focus of his own lonely, bloodthirsty religion.

Sam is the only thing he’ll ever kneel for, ever pray to, ever worship at.

He comes to realize that Sam is aware of him, that he’s looked up and is staring right at Dean like an answered prayer, his pupils massive in the low light, his mouth swollen from whispered invocation. Dean stares and lets himself be watched, the intensity threading between them and pulling hard, making Dean’s heart race with the need to sink into Sam, to put his own heartbeat in Sam’s body.

Sam smiles, tiny and sweet, and moves on the seat to give Dean room.

He settles into the wedged corner of the pew, on the tired, unyielding wood heavy with countless burdens, his shoulder pressed to Sam’s. He feels silly now, like his soul’s underdressed in amongst the sumptuous devotion of the ones around him. He doesn’t move around to try and get comfortable, doesn’t lift his head to stare at the strange opulence of Old World religion. He just falls quiet at Sam’s side, lowering his head to stare down at his cold hands, and lets Sam forget he’s there so he can get back to what he was doing.

The Latin is lovely and droning, the whispers around him sweetly lyrical, the incense heady and reminding Dean that this is ancient, this is ritual, this unites every single person under the high roof of the cathedral; all except him.

The bells sound overhead, so much louder now than they’d been outside the bar, ringing in midnight and Christmas Day while the priest in his heavy robes intones _Gloria in excelsis Deo_.

It’s beautiful, all of it, and Dean loathes himself for thinking so.

Sam’s hand is warm when it finds his, his fingers long and fine as a pianist’s when they lace between Dean’s thicker ones, the palmistry of their lines touching, mirroring, shared destinies.

Dean closes his eyes and sinks down into the bench, letting his face tuck into the crook of Sam’s neck, adding the scent of his brother’s body to the smell of mythology all around them. He can hear Sam’s soft speech from this close, can feel the breath leaving his body as he sends up prayers to an unworthy god.

Dean begins his benedictions at his own private mass right here against Sam’s skin, the secret altar of his own religion.

**Author's Note:**

> [reblog if you liked it!](http://dollylux.tumblr.com/post/135790560476/dollyluxs-fic-advent-calendar-2015-siblings) :)


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